A Blended Learning Approach: Motivation and Difficulties in Learning Programming

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the education landscape entirely. When it comes to a new normal in education, information and communication technologies (ICT) integration is often part of the teaching and learning strategies. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, many educational institutions could not operate fully, and blended learning is one of the alternative instructional models. Blended learning is an educational approach that combines face-to-face (offline) and online learning instructions, and the effectiveness of blended system has been reported in many past studies (e.g., Alhazbi, 2016; Chiu, 2021; Tang et al., 2020; Yigit et al., 2014). Despite the positive outlook, younger students (e.g., primary, secondary and pre-university education) are more likely to face difficulties in adapting to the online learning instructions, and even well performed students may lose motivation when learning remotely (Di Pietro et al., 2020). Students who are isolated from their peers and instructors may face learning difficulties and psychological problems that demotivate them to learn independently (Di Pietro et al., 2020). Very few studies have investigated the design of technological environments that satisfy students’ inner psychological needs (Chiu, 2021). Hence, more studies are required to understand how educational technologies can support learning motivation, resulting in better learning experience and positive learning outcomes (Ryan & Deci, 2020).

Blended learning is the best educational model to learn programming (Alhazbi, 2016). Unfortunately, students with no self-directed learning skills could find it hard and discouraging to learn programming independently, e.g., watching video lectures followed by in-class programming practices (Baldwin, 2015; Di Pietro et al., 2020). Responding to these findings, this study investigated motivation and difficulties of pre-university students in learning programming in a blended learning environment. This study addressed the following research questions:

• 1.

  How students rated their proficiency in programming?

• 2.

  What were the difficulties faced in learning programming?

• 3.

  How were students motivated to learn programming?

To answer these research questions, quantitative and qualitative data were collected to triangulate the findings of the study.